In search of my true self…

“This is.. the Gunjo Broadcasting.. clu…” *Static*

“Is anyone…” *Static*

*Static* “See you next week…”

And the story begins…

Those words, although simple or even mundane, contained far more meaning (well, at least that’s what I felt after reading Cross†Channel).

Cross†Channel is a Japanese Visual Novel (What is a Visual Novel?) which I had the chance to come across and enjoy, thanks to the hard work of  the FlyingShine and the translation group Amaterasu.  

Depicting a not-so-normal summer at the Gunjo Gakuren (Blue Marine School), we get acquainted  with the different characters of the story, each having their own reason for enrolling into this ‘particular’ school…

It was rather interesting that I happened to chanced upon this video clip again in 2, no 3 years:

Bluebirds are commonly associated with happiness, but I’m not sure it is the case for this Visual Novel (I haven’t had the chance to read it yet). From what I heard so far, all does not end well for the Elric brothers…

I think the constant reminder of the upcoming solar eclipse has made me go read this visual novel (Really!).

Not sure how a Solar became a Lunar in my mind, but this was definitely a great read.

Translated as part of the al|together 2008 “CROSS THE RUBICON” festival, this short (30min - 1 hour) visual novel weaves the reader into a story of the narrator and the ‘girl’ Mai, with the narrator diagnosed as incapable to work in a office, he had found a job as office boy at a pub called ‘Shanty’, there he met Mai and everything began from there.

I don’t think I can say more without spoiling the visual novel.

One of the best thing in this visual novel is the way the writer describe things and how they built up the atmosphere by slowing letting bits of information out, plus it’s small but brilliant soundtrack does it’s role perfectly. For a freeware visual novel I’m rather surprised they had a voice over for the character Mai, plus a voiced song too!

Do visit the website for downloads and more details: Moonshine

This visual novel scores a 8 out of 10 points on my scale :D

I’m listening to the song: ~Moonshine~ (a.k.a Mai’s song) as I write this post.

Drum roll please! Ha ha. I finally made the trailer for my visual novel: “Long way home: Delusions & Happiness”.

Err.. It’s a just a collection of still images.

That’s mainly because I have no idea how to make those fantastic videos that involves texts zooming here and there… I’m thankful for my previous experience in Windows Movie Maker, all is good. At least for now :D

Oh yeah, many thanks to www.incompetech.com where I found this beautiful yet haunting track: “Dark Walk”  for the trailer.

That’s all for now XD. Thanks for reading/watching.

Remember the story that I wrote in this post: What!? Another story? Well, I was toying around with the idea of making a visual novel for a while now, and suddenly it struck me:  I should make that  story into a visual novel as a test run, before I move on the make the real deal.

So I took the do-first-clean-up-later approach, and went to MorgueFile to look for the pictures I needed and started editing it, within a hour or so the images were done(title included). Deciding it was enough for a prologue, I dived into the story and converted it into a script, firing up the RenPy engine to combine everything together, well everything took longer than expected (Whole process took 5~6 hours) all the rewriting, placement of the pictures. Giving it a test run, it ran for less then 10min (6 hours work for a 10min read, LOL) to reach the end of the prologue.

To remind myself of what could be done if I tried, I decided to take a few screenshots:

I’m tipping my hat off to those successful Visual Novel makers, now I know how hard it is to make a Visual Novel.

Looks like it’s still a “long way home” for my visual novel, oh well… At least I started!